The area formerly had a reputation for being a red light district and run-down. However, rapid regeneration since the mid-1990s has rendered this reputation largely out-of-date. Since November 2007 the area has been the terminus of the Eurostar rail service at St Pancras International, with services to France and Belgium. Regeneration continues under the auspices of King's Cross Central, a major redevelopment in the north of the area. Many more hotels, restaurants, and cultural venues have made the area a cultural centre in the 2000s and there is also substantial business activity and residential accommodation.

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The area was previously a village known as Battle Bridge or Battlebridge which was an ancient crossing of the River Fleet. The original name of the bridge was Broad Ford Bridge. The corruption "Battle Bridge" led to a tradition that this was the site of a major battle in AD 60 or 61 between the Romans and the Iceni tribe led by Boudica (also known as Boudicea).[1] The tradition claims support from the writing of Publius Cornelius Tacitus, an ancient Roman historian, who described the place of action between the Romans and Boadicea (Annals 14.31), but without specifying where it was; Thornbury addresses the pros and cons of the identification. Lewis Spence's 1937 book Boadicea – warrior queen of the Britons includes a map showing the supposed positions of the opposing armies. The suggestion that Boudica is buried beneath platform 9 or 10 at King's Cross Station seems to have arisen as urban folklore since the end of World War II.[2] The area had been settled in Roman times, and a camp here, known as The Brill was erroneously attributed to Julius Caesar, who never visited Londinium.[3] The name is commemorated in two streets lying behind King's Cross and St Pancras stations. St Pancras Old Church, also set behind the stations, is said to be one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain.

The current name has its origin in a monument to King George IV which stood in the area from 1830 to 1845.[4] It was built at the crossroads of Gray's Inn Road, Pentonville Road and New Road, which later became Euston Road. It was sixty feet high and topped by an eleven-foot-high statue of the king, and was described by Walter Thornbury as "a ridiculous octagonal structure crowned by an absurd statue".[1] The statue itself, which cost no more than £25, was constructed of bricks and mortar, and finished in a manner that gave it the appearance of stone "at least to the eyes of common spectators".[5] The architect was Stephen Geary,[6] who exhibited a model of "the Kings Cross" at the Royal Academy in 1830.[7] The upper storey was used as a camera obscura while the base in turn housed a police station and a public house. The unpopular building was demolished in 1845, though the area has kept the name of Kings Cross.[1] A structure in the form of a lighthouse was built on top of a building almost on the site about 30 years later. Known locally as the "Lighthouse Building", the structure was popularly thought to be an advertisement for Netten's Oyster Bar on the ground floor, but this seems not to be true.[8] It is a grade II listed building.[9]

St Pancras railway station station, built by the Midland Railway, lies immediately to the west. They both had extensive land ("the railway lands") to house their associated facilities for handling general goods and specialist commodities such as fish, coal, potatoes and grain. The passenger stations on Euston Road far outweighed in public attention the economically more important goods traffic to the north. King's Cross and St Pancras stations, and indeed all London railway stations, made an important contribution to the capital's economy.

Model showing the current redevelopment of the Kings Cross area with the new High Speed 1 terminal behind the barrel vaulted St Pancras station on the left.

After World War II the area declined from being a poor but busy industrial and distribution services district to a partially abandoned post-industrial district. By the 1980s it was notorious for prostitution and drug abuse. This reputation impeded attempts to revive the area, utilising the large amount of land available following the decline of the railway goods yard to the north of the station and the many other vacant premises in the area.

Relatively cheap rents and a central London location made the area attractive to artists and designers and both Antony Gormley and Thomas Heatherwick established studios in the area. In the 1990s the government established the King's Cross Partnership[10] to fund regeneration projects, and the commencement of work on High Speed 1 in 2000 provided a major impetus for other projects. Within a few years much of the "socially undesirable" behaviour had moved on, and new projects such as offices and hotels had begun to open. The area has also been for many years home to a number of trades union head offices (including the NUJ, RMT, UNISON, NUT, Community and UCU).

The area is expected to remain a major focus of redevelopment through the first two decades of the 21st century. The London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service moved to St Pancras station in November 2007. The station's redevelopment led to the demolition of several buildings, including the Gasworks.[11] Following the opening of the new high speed line to the station, redevelopment of the land between the two major stations and the old Kings Cross railwaylands to the rear has commenced, with outline planning permission granted for the whole site. Detailed planning applications[12] for each part of the site are being made on a rolling programme basis. The site is now called King's Cross Central and is one of the largest construction projects in Greater London in the first quarter of the 21st century.

For readers of Harry Potter, King's Cross is where the schoolboy hero boards the train for Hogwarts. The railway station has capitalised on tourist interest by putting up a sign for the fictional "Platform 93⁄4" described in the books, and burying a luggage trolley, apparently, half into the wall.

"Vale Royal", an epic poem in 700 triads by Aidan Andrew Dun probes into this zone of London, Vale Royal was launched at the Albert Hall in 1995. A triad of Dun's, excerpted from another poem, "The Brill" has been installed at the western end of Granary Square in a small grove of trees beside the new Central Saint Martins. It reads: 'Kings Cross, dense with angels and histories, there are cities beneath your pavements, cities behind your skies. Let me see!'

The British pop music duo Pet Shop Boys recorded a song featured on their 1987 album Actually named "King's Cross": the melancholy track discusses the hopelessness of the AIDSepidemic during that time and uses the Kings Cross area as the "backdrop" of the story, trading on the area's associations with drug use and prostitution. Tracey Thorncovered the song in 2007. Songwriter David Gedge also wrote a song called "King's Cross" while recording under the name Cinerama.

In the beginning of 2010 Chinese authorities announced a bold plan to link Chinese high speed national railway directly to London King's Cross international railway station. This would allow passengers to reach London from Beijing in just two days.

^Built in the 1860s and rebuilt in the 1880s, the gasholders (of unique linked triplet design) were still in use until 1999. Several gasholders (the site was originally a gasworks) that had dominated the area behind station for over a century have been taken down during the building works and placed in storage, and it is intended that they should be re-erected but converted to other use, possibly for housing.